J's 1st Birthday Party

6.21.2018

In the eight years I've been blogging, I don't think I've been as bad of a blog writer (or reader!) as I have been for the past month. The end of May and June so far have been absolutely nuts and so full of friends and family, and I love it.Over the weekend we hosted family for J's first birthday party! So far I haven't gone huge on either of R's birthday parties, and we didn't for J either. Just family and no themes. Maybe I will get more into themed parties once the kids start actually caring about things, but for now I've stuck with just a color theme, which has worked really well. Although I love seeing themed parties other people do!

I wouldn't exactly say J's birthday snuck up on me... maybe more that I was in denial. We set a party date back in April, and I had invitations printed out from Shutterfly and mailed a long time ago, but that was as far as I got until a week before the party. R's first birthday was pink & gold, and for J's I went with blue as the "theme" to center my crafting around. I searched Pinterest for ideas and saved screenshots to my phone of the photos I liked. I realized a common element was triangles and shades of blue, so that's what I went with. Here's a collage of my inspiration photos, including the cake, which turned out so much better than I thought it would!

I've never ordered a cake before, and although it was more expensive than it would have been had I made a $2 Betty Crocker boxed cake, it was really fun because it looked so great and tasted yummy! You can't see it in the photo very well, but the frosting had some shimmer to it. The inside was white with a layer of the same blue frosting. The entire bottom is actually in my freezer right now. We only finished off the top.

Jordan grilled hot dogs and brats, and we had chips, pasta salad, and fruit. I moved wall hangings around and created this little corner for the food table. After lunch we cleaned it off and set the cake up. My mom had the idea to put J on the table and take a few photos, so we had an impromptu "cake smash" session where J only poked at the cake and then looked confused at the blue frosting on his finger. My dad was standing by to catch J if he tried to climb off.

After lunch we opened presents! J only cared about eating tissue paper, which is to be expected, but I am thankful for all the gifts we got! A few people even brought R something to open, which was so nice and super thoughtful.

After presents was cake time! I was totally laughing at myself for being a typical first time mom with R's first birthday cake. I made her a healthy cake with no sugar and blueberries in it, and then J got the regular old sugar-packed white cake and buttercream frosting. J got really excited when I gave him the cake, and then he became really upset when his hands got all messy from the icing. He picked up the whole slice at one point, but I don't think he actually ate any of the cake. I also forgot to light a candle, and only after we were all eating did I remember to get everyone to sing happy birthday.

Before R's first birthday, my friend Laura gave me some really fantastic advice that I've tried to remember for each birthday since. She told me that it will be a fun but stressful day planning and preparing to host family and friends for a party and that I should at some point during the day take one minute to stop and focus on the moment. Look around and take it all in and be truly present in the moment.We had a wonderful time at the party, and I'm so thankful for everyone who was able to be there. Happy birthday, J! Hope you loved it.p.s. I wanted to share the chair video I made for J this year, just like I did with R! This is one of my favorite projects. Enjoy!

12 comments:

This is so adorable. I cannot stand his cuteness and red hair! Funny someone gave me that advice for my wedding day, and I actually do remember standing a few times just taking it all in. Those special days go by too too fast! Happy Birthday, J!

His outfit at 11 months in the chair video is SO precious! Oh my goodness, he is adorable! Happy first birthday to J! It's hard to believe that it has been a year already because I'm in denial about what's coming next month for us (let's not talk about it). Happy happy birthday to him!

Awww! You got some really great photos! Is it weird that I'm already thinking that Cyrus's birthday parties in the future are going to be so fun? :P Probably that's somewhat expected given that I always love a good party. Also, it's a great excuse for myself to eat party food.

Gorgeous party, Amanda!! And I LOVE the family pictures of you four! What a sweet celebration! Sometimes I think it's better to forget to sing at young kid's bday parties... I've seen at least TWO kids break out in tears from the attention and noise, lol!